The Taliban - who had banned music and ordered men to wear beards - were gone.

"Look this feels so good," Ahmed Shah said as he rubbed his freshly shaven face. "I hated the beard. It was always itchy."

Many women were still not ready to abandon the all-enveloping burka - a traditional garment made mandatory by the Taliban.

There were signs, however, that some, perhaps most, of the younger, educated women would eventually abandon the burka in favour of Western styles.

In an old blue bus, one woman quickly flipped her burka up over her head. Men who were gathering around a group of Northern Alliance soldiers laughed.

One young soldier gestured to the women to take their burkas off. Most of the women who were holding small children simply watched the soldiers. Some of the women closed the curtains that are on all buses that carry women in Afghanistan. Others simply looked away.

"For now we will leave the burka on. We don't know yet who are these people in the city," said Mariam Jan. Her husband, an ethnic Tajik, Mohammed Wazir, said: "It is our tradition. We are not sure that it will stop."

Noor Mohammed, a small stout man, held a small tape player to his ear, waved his hands in the air dancing to the tune blaring from the radio.

"We are free," he shouted in his native Dari language.

Residents of the Afghan capital peered through the open doors of abandoned Taliban military bases and whispered to each other: "Are they gone?"

The bodies of two Arabs lay near the United Nations guest house, outside a military compound in a city that was taken over by Northern Alliance with virtually no resistance.

Bundles of burned clothes and blankets were piled on top of the corpses, and a charred rocket launcher lay beside one of them.

People gathered to look. The bodies of five Pakistanis lay where they were killed outside a small police station in the heart of Kabul.

Sporadic gunfire pierced the crisp early morning air as Northern Alliance soldiers celebrated their victory over the Islamic militia that

ousted them from the capital in 1996.

US bombing cleared the way for their rapid advances, which began with the fall of the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday.

Opposition fighters moved quickly through Kabul neighbourhoods, conducting house-to-house searches and seizing abandoned bases. Rifle fire was heard at some outposts on the edges of the city.

"I think there were some Taliban who were asleep when everyone else left," said a smiling Abdul Jan. "They have woken up and they are thinking ‘Oh my God, what can I do?'"

Fearing retaliation, a frightened employee of the Taliban's official Bakhtar News Agency hid his turban beneath the seat of his car. The Taliban required all men to wear turbans.

"Do you think they will hurt me?" Abdul Rehman asked.

In some areas of Kabul, residents gathered on street corners to talk about what they had seen, and pointed out houses of former Taliban commanders. Opposition soldiers said they were collecting arms as they moved door-to-door.

Groups of five to 10 men huddled in the streets, wrapped in woollen shawls. Northern Alliance fighters sped through the streets in vehicles camouflaged with mud that had been left behind by Taliban troops.

"We leave everything to God. We don't know what will happen.

"We pray only for peace," said Sheer Agha, an elderly man wrapped in a striped shawl, his grey beard reaching almost to his chest.

"We are happy. Now I have to go to the barber to shave my beard," said Zabiullah, an ethnic Tajik. "Today is a happy day."

Two men on a bike looked at each other. "Do you think I can shave now?" one asked. The Taliban required men to grow long beards and failure to do so invited harsh punishment.

Houses used by Taliban leaders in the once posh

neighbourhood of Wazir Akbar Khan were abandoned. The large steel doors of home of former health minister Mullah Abbas Akhund were wide open.

In the money market in the old city, businessmen said departing Taliban soldiers emptied the stores of goods and money.

One money changer said Taliban soldiers on tanks stopped in front of the shops, demanded the money and then rumbled out of the city.